There is a fine line in marketing when it comes to assessing what works. Measurement is, of course, all important. Without the means to track success of any tool or tactic, you won’t know where to concentrate your efforts and focus attention.
What do you do with that information? Obviously success is something you want to repeat, whereas less beneficial activities may need to be curtailed or at least tweaked to improve their effectiveness. This is where the fine line comes in! How do you know when to cut something short, when to change something, or when to abandon it altogether? Obviously measurement is key to that decision, but there are other forces in play.
- Planning and commitment – essential activities both. When you know why you pursuing a particular tactic, the results you are looking for and how that particular approach fits into your overall business plan, you will be far more likely to commit time and effort to it
- How long? – realistically, how long do you give a marketing tool to begin to bear fruit? This will vary. You may well get an idea of how effective direct mail is proving as soon as the first mailing arrives. However in many cases (depending on your business niche) significant results may take longer – what is the normal lead time for your service? Tactics like networking are essentially long term commitments and you need to understand that at the outset
- You can’t do everything – and nor should you try. There arr thousands of tools and tactics from which to choose. There will always be a new thing to try, one that may seem cooler than what you are doing now. There are countless examples of businesses changing to something new when there existing tactic was working well. This leads us to the point of this post…..
When it works, keep doing it, indeed do more of it. That may sound too simple to require stating, but the siren call of new and exciting tactics, the special offer etc. can be all too tempting. Remember the reason for marketing your business in the first place – essentially to get a steady stream of qualified clients into that business.
When you find something that works, that goal is much closer to being realized. We are talking about things that WORK here. Of course, when something is failing there is no future in blindly following that path downward, but success needs to be recognized and built upon.
You will figure this out. There is plenty of advice and support available to help you choose the appropriate tactics. There is also a lot of guidance to help you make the most of any activity you decide to implement and it is certainly worth taking full advantage. However, the same cautionary note applies. Keep the advice in context for your business. Avoid the temptation to throw out what is proven to work because a new approach has been introduced that someone told you was great.
This is where the line is drawn, although it isn’t a firm line! It is always worth investigating new ideas to see if they could work for you. Sticking to the same format because “that’s what we have always done” is a route to stagnation. But sticking to a tactic that works, whilst always looking to enhance and develop it, perhaps ADDING but not replacing, will put you on a much more consistent path to success.
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